Cornwall and The Problem Of Scaling Up

Valerie has persuaded me to put some of the Cornwall sketches on the blog.  I am also struggling with the concept of scaling up small work painted directly - ie on the spot in one session - to larger paintings in the studio.  We bearded Ken Howard about this at the Enid Lawson Gallery the other day and he said 'use a really big brush', which makes sense until you try it!  One of my biggest problems is careless brushwork.  I have a tendency to dodge that moment when you have to make really positive marks with a fully loaded brush.  I can get away with it in a small painting but not in a big one.  Anyway, I am trying to scale up some of the Cornwall work so I will show large and small together.  I also love developing pastels based on oil sketches.  Let's look at that aspect first:

This is the original 8x10 inch Pendeen sketch showing the Enys rock and Levant mines beyond

And this is the slightly bigger pastel based on it.  I prefer the original but doing a pastel often sets me off in a new direction - not this time!.

Now the scaling up problem.  Two examples, first the 8x10 inch view of Irish Lady and Land's End in oil:

Now the 16x20 inch based on it:

You can see that I have altered the composition and slightly lowered the point of view.  It is OK but the foreground is somehow less interesting at that scale.  I was surrounded by seagulls (and guano) so maybe I should have put them all in!

In contrast I think one of the Pendeen paintings has scaled up quite well.  I did some tiny acrylic sketches of the Enys from Pendeen Old Cliff.  The 7.5x5.5 inch sketch became a 14x18 inch oil painting.  Here is the sketcvh:

And this is the studio version:

I have pushed the colour a bit and some of the brushwork is deliberately crude but I think it works.  I was quite pleased with the other Enys pair and maybe I will post those another day.  Finally, one of my favourites from 23 paintings done in 5 days and a morning - Sunset at Sennen on my last evening there (8x10 inches).